The Road to Health & Lessons Learned

"If it were easy, everyone would do it."

This is a phrase my husband has preached to me since day one of this health journey.  This road has been long.  It's been hard...and it's not over yet.

It started back last Christmas, I went to the doctor for an annual checkup.  It had been a rough year to say the least.  I had gone back to my coping mechanism of food throughout that year.  It was starting to show.  My weight was over 200 for the first time in my life.  That number may cause some of you to scoff, but for me, I knew I was on a downhill slide and it needed to hit the breaks.  I was so distraught by this wake up call, that I told my husband I have to do something.

Throughout that year, we'd had our ups and mainly a lot of downs as a family, but I'm a mom.  I tend to self-sacrifice to the point of self-destruction.  I am willing to trample most any of my needs for those I care about the most.  While that quality has some positives, it also has some deep negatives.  See, I've learned that when I deny my own needs, I tend not to talk about them...I glaze over them...until I NEED to "feed" a desire for something that I want.  I need to feel like I can respond to something that I want, just to feel like at least I myself hear my own voice and see my own struggles.  Therefore, I can indulge on the chips in my closet, the peppermint bark I've stowed away, the Reese's in my bottom drawer.  I just want to feel like somebody hears that I want something and responds...even if that responder is me.  But the problem is, I wasn't talking about what I needed or wanted because the needs around me that year were "so much greater" than my own needs.  Welcome to motherhood, right?

I reached the point of not caring.  I was so weighed down (no pun intended) by everything that was going on, I just stuffed my face and decided I didn't care.  I really just gave myself permission to basically throw a year-long pity party.  "Nobody sees me, but at least I see me, and I'm going to give myself something want."  As I look back, honestly, I was suffocating on the inside and it came out in ways that I could CONTROL.

I LIKE CONTROL.

Things outside my control bother me.  Everything from that year was outside of my control.  So at least I could choose what went in my body and I just wanted to have fun, to let loose, to forget how stressful things were...and it showed on December 23, 2015.

When I saw my weight, I became angry...in a good way.  In a motivating way.  I reflected on it before Christmas and I finally realized I didn't know who I was, outside of being a mom and wife.  That year had been so stressful, they were the only roles I knew.  So I sat down with my husband and said, "I need to change.  This needs to change.  I need to get to being healthy and also...I need some space from being a mom and wife.  I need it to actually be a better wife and mom.  Can we do something?"  He was fully on board.  When it came to food, I'm a binger.  So I told him, I can't do the Paleo diet all the time.  I need periodic breaks, or my binging side will come out.  I wanted a full on lifestyle change and not a diet.  I wanted something that would work for my life, I had 3 kids under 2 at that time.  So for the first month, we did all paleo all the time.  My husband told me that for the first month it was a good idea, because I needed to feel hope...I needed to shed weight quickly to get my own heart excited about progress.  So over that month I lost about 10 lbs.  It was Paleo accompanied by "FitnessBlender" workouts from YouTube every morning Monday-Friday from 6:30ish-7ish.  They were short, simple, doable...and as my husband says, "If you work out in the mornings, nothing that happens that day can take that workout success from you."  For me, this worked.

After that first month, we went into Paleo from Monday-Friday, and we could eat more liberally over the weekends.  This worked well, and continues to.  I get periodic breaks with no guilt.  This worked well for several months.

Then came my sister-in-law's passing.  It was about a month long time of stress and eating out while in California.  I just didn't care again.  This is always my pattern.  I give excuses and stop caring in times of stress.  Stress is my trigger.  I gained some back.  So by the end of August, what had been a 20+ lb loss, went back up 5 lbs.  I was so frustrated.  I was just starting a new job too, and trying to just get the reins.  It took until the second week of September to get back into any sort of groove.  I've been back in my groove now for about 6 weeks.

Since January, I'm now down 32 lbs.

Now, looking at that number, you'd think I'd be happy.  I am.  But here's the thing...I'm so used to being heavier, that I don't even see it...I don't see the progress.  I get scared.  I get scared when I hit ruts.  I'm scared I'm stuck where I am.  All of my true and deep insecurities come out in those moments...What if I AM NOT ENOUGH?  What if all this is for nothing?  What good is work when you just get stuck?  Maybe I should just give up?  What if it's not just my body failing, what if I'm failing?  What if I am a failure?

Even the memory of those thoughts bring tears to my eyes.  Here's the thing, those voices have NOTHING to do with weight.  It's the health journey that BRINGS OUT ALREADY EXISTING INSECURITY.  It doesn't CREATE the insecurity.

This journey brings out all sorts of real battles for me.  Real thoughts I've always had or worried about come to the surface.  Maybe I'm:

-ugly

-unwantable

-not good for much

-not really an asset to those around me

-just taking up space

-many more

These are real battles.  They draw me back to food because food is something I can control.  But I've learned something about my body that also applies to life.  As my husband says, "Trust the process.  Your body was MADE to be happy and healthy and process food well while you're being active.  The scale and your feelings don't tell the whole story."  This is true for me in life in general.  When I look inwardly to try to get answer that only comes Outwardly, from our Reliable Source of Life, I come back to my coping mechanisms in life.  I give in to the things I know I shouldn't, just to feel that sense of "control."  But when I trust Him, and allow Him to do the GRADUAL work that is making me more Christ-like...even when I don't see progress, I don't see change, and maybe I'm just "stuck" where I am spiritually...I have to trust His process.  He will bring me to the goals He has for me, and then He'll take me Home.

Thankfully, I have people who "see" the progress in my life and my body that I do not.  My friend Katie told me, "Sometimes, we need friends to speak the truth of what is, into the lies that we tell ourselves or that others tell to us.  We need each other."  I've always known this is true, but my health journey has now turned my eyes to real life that has nothing to do with the weight.  I lie to myself, I allow Satan to lie to me, I allow Satan to use others to lie to me.  But I need the friends who come into my life and tell me the truth, whether it's easy or hard to hear.  I need Katie to walk up to me and say, "You can really tell how much work you've put in."  I need Fumbi to say, "Wow, your wedding pictures make the weight you've lost really obvious."  I need Jeremy (my brother from another mother) to walk in my house and say, "You're looking fantastic."  I need my husband to say, "Wow, when you turn to the side I can really tell you're slimming down."

I do not need these things in the way that is an elevating of myself or my work, but I need their true sight to fight the lies in my life.  God made us for community.  There's a reason that when we do life on our own, we find ourselves completely crippled and devoid of emotion and connection.  We long for these things.  To be clear, we are not to be DEPENDENT on people.  Only God can handle being depended on completely.  But there is a purpose to having a solid community that surrounds us, that sees the progress God makes in our lives and to call it out for what it is.  We need those people to also say, "Hey, it seems that this or this could be improved."  We will always stumble and fall, but God is faithful. When we allow Him to do progressive and corrective work in our lives, we have to trust His process and allow others to speak truth into our lives.  Sometimes truth feels good, but a lot of times it's hard to hear.  But keep trusting God's process, surround yourself with Godly people who encourage and correct you, and always weigh what someone tells you against the Word of God.  God is truth.  God is love.  We need people in our lives who show us both, simultaneously.

Here's to trusting, the process...

God Gives "Just Enough" Trials

I was writing to my mom today as we are reading from a Mother/Daughter book together, and I was reflecting on what I was reading.  I looked back over my life as a daughter, more as a girl/woman in general, and realized something I hadn't considered before.

See, people throughout my life have considered me, "The Golden Child."  I've been called this in the past on several occasions.  I wasn't ever really sure as to why.  I definitely have my own struggles, and man, if you could see the thoughts in my heart sometimes, you'd truly be appalled and potentially question my faith.  But I look back and I see God's grace throughout my life.  Especially when it comes to my life circumstances.

I kid you not, the Lord has rescued me from myself on many occasions.  I can give several examples.  When I went to Spain for a semester in college, I wanted to party like most of my friends.  I wanted to be able to just let loose.  No one was looking anyway.  Who would know?  The thing was God looked at me and said, "This is not for you."  I would LITERALLY get physically nauseous the couple of times I even tried to go out.  One guy tried to get in my business and literally the Gospel in Spanish came pouring out of my mouth.  WHAT THE WHAT?!  The Lord rescued me from potentially poor choices there, and I'm still not sure why, but as an adult I'm grateful for His grace.  Another example, I was interested in a guy once who was absolutely no good.  But no matter what I did, he and I were never on the same page.  He liked me during one period where I didn't feel that way, and then the roles would flip flop.  It's crazy.  I HAD to part ways with him eventually, and it turns out the Lord had given him a dream of the conversation the night before in the exact room where I ended up having the conversation where we parted ways.  That's nuts.  I have a plethora of these kinds of stories that I now look back on and am so grateful for God's divine intervention.

However, I've also been allowed to make very poor choices and judgment calls as well.  I've been allowed to have trials...because of an unexplained incident with my daughter when she was a baby, we've had Child Protective Services, detectives and social workers in our home for 7 months straight while being supervised 24/7 with our kids because someone had to LIVE WITH US for several months!  The aftermath of that was weight gain and stress galore in my house where plenty of mistakes were made.  I was recently let go from my nursery job that I'd held for the last two years...I'd never been let go from a job in my life.  We purchased our first home that was WAY out of our price range and it took us a year and a half to realize it.  It therefore led to us losing the majority of our large down payment because of the price difference between that house and the one we bought after that we could've afforded and our down payment would have covered a lot of the home itself.  I've been allowed to crash and burn on many occasions.  I have a plethora of these stories too.

But you know what I realized as I was typing an email to my mom?  I realized the Lord had always allowed me to make enough bad choices and to endure just enough trials to turn me back to Him.  He would take just enough from me to keep me safe from things I didn't need to endure to turn my heart to Him.  But he allowed just enough to bring me absolutely to my knees to acknowledge how weak I am in myself and how desperately I need Him.  I've been given "just enough" to bring me back to the path He desires for me.

Why is my story the story God's chosen to work through?  I'm not sure.  I'll never have an answer as to why my path looks the way it does.  But I rest in knowing that the God who has given me "just enough" to bring me back to Him will continue to do so.  The trials He allows as well as the mistakes He grants me make will always bring me back to the Cross, the only true level playing field.  The only place of true humility of spirit and unity with the Father.  And while I wouldn't want to repeat any of my trials, I also would take back for a moment the intimacy with the Father I've gained in the process...and that's what I want to pass on to my girls.  He know them even better than I do or than they know themselves.  He knows what it will take to get their attention.  It may not be on my timeline, but He knows how to turn them back toward Him in their hearts.  I have to entrust their journey to Him.  He will also allow them to experience "just enough" and then their responsibility is to respond.  I must allow God to care for them as He has for me.